We talked about this in the raid last night, but I wanted to expand on it a bit when we aren't all tired and frustrated. :)
Throne of Thunder is a long raid with 12 bosses and a good chunk of trash. We only raid two nights a week. Our best run so far is 6 bosses in one night. If we can keep that pace for the second half of ToT, we can clear the whole place in one week. The problem is that is a farming raid. It's one where we don't have to learn any new bosses. The more bosses we put on farm, the less time we'll have to learn new bosses. How many weeks will it take us to learn Lei Shen if we only have 30 minutes left on Monday night by the time we clear the other 11 bosses? So far, we've done well at getting through things faster so we still have time to work on new bosses, but I think we're just about at our max.
I've been thinking about this since we started ToT and expected it would come at some point. My plan was to wait until we reached a point where we didn't have enough time to work on a new boss. We are already very close to that. We do still have some leeway. Getting better at Durumu would leave us enough time to get at least Primordius and Dark Animus in, but after that we're running very short on time. One of our problems last tier was that we didn't have much time to get gear from the last few bosses in Heart of Fear and the Terrace. Mostly that was due to the really large raid tier, but we don't want the same problem for Throne of Thunder. We need some time to farm the last bosses for gear just like the first ones.
Anyway, as you obviously know, I think we've reached that point. I think it will be beneficial for us to extend on Thursday and work on Durumu again. We definitely CAN kill him, we just gotta stop all the little screw ups. Me included. (Disengaging into the water, PFAH.) I believe we can kill him fairly early Thursday, which leaves us time to get Primordius and maybe Dark Animus in. Monday we should have a great shot at Iron Qon and the Twins. We should absolutely be able to go from 7/12 to 11/12 this very week. There is a lot of nice gear there too including THREE tier bosses! In the event that things just go badly for some reason, extending the raid doesn't lock us to it until we kill a boss so we can still un-extend and clear the first six on Monday. (Or a couple hours into Thursday.) That turns out the same as if we'd cleared the first six and got stuck on Durumu.
It sounded like most people were in favor of it, so that's the current plan, but I certainly want to hear your feelings on the matter!
Greedy Reason: The biggest upgrade for me right now is a tier helm. Not only would it give me my 4-piece, but also let me use the legendary meta, and both would be a huge upgrade for me.
Real reason: We've proven we can get Durumu (I still call him Dormammu in my head). He's definitely our Amber Shaper fight this tier, by that I mean we've got the strat, we can execute it, but everyone has to be on the ball; one single mistake can wipe the raid. The more we practice on him to tighten up the fight, the better. The next three mobs should be simple to take down, and will offer bigger upgrades to our raid force then the last 6.
IMO, we could spend Thursday farming the older bosses and getting a couple gear upgrades for people (God knows I would love some, I've only managed to get a ring from the first boss), but we aren't losing because of gear. Adding an extra 5k dps or heals wont help us kill him any better. We just need to focus and do a solid maze / color with lifedrain phase, and we've got him down. I fully believe we can 1 shot him if everyone focuses.
Even though my BiS weapon comes from the 3rd boss in the instance I am all in favor of clearing/killing/extending as we go. I think we may have to start doing that depending on the weeks. For example:
Day 1 - Clear first 6 bosses
Day 2 - Clear next 3+ bosses
Day 3 - Extend and finish instance
Means we have a "free" raid night depending or a 2nd night to finish the instance.
Means we are going to have less "Farm" raid nights as this would mean every 2nd week we aren't clearing it fully based on the above plan. I think we NEED more gear from the end as always seems to be what is needed (Tier pieces/Helms off last bosses etc).
Personally my schedule for the next little while means Monday's I will be late getting on due to Softball and Thursdays I should be fine depending on my daughter's baseball games and where they are. So I am fine with extending and helping out however is needed!
Darkguns - Level 90 DK
Autogun - Retired Lock
Wilygun - Druid Extraordinaire
Shamgun - Shaman fun!
I'm in favor of extending lockouts for learning and farming the last 6 bosses. There are still upgrades for me in the first 6 but killing those twice a month or so would do well enough. Until we're able to start heroic modes, we're faced with execution checks, not gear checks.
For this week, I believe we have a backup plan of going back and re-clearing the first 6 bosses if we continue to fail on Durumu. However, going forward I think it would be beneficial on weeks that we are extending the lockout to permit players who have a need for gear from earlier bosses to PuG the bosses up to the boss we intend to start on. This would be a substantial advantage for starting on Thursdays to be able to allow people to PuG the first 6 bosses on tuesday. Of course, we would have to be extremely clear from week to week about whether or not people are cleared to go ahead and do that.
Coordinating extended lockouts so we can PuG earlier bosses is a great idea.
Our limit isn't gear, its execution. Will gear help.. of course but its not what is holding us back. People need to go into LFR and practice the mechanics of the fight. We are dying to stupid things like the maze far too often. I'm all for extending and clearing the place.
Aanvil i do agree with you about the pugging part as well...
Extend and try for half raid time would be my thought... if we fail then let's clear first 6 and go again Monday.
That was effective! Though I miss the loot options, I'm extremely glad to have Durumu and Primordius down and still have time for more bosses this week. I'm really excited to get to the later bosses tonight! :D
Opening the extended door asks a tricky question: When do we close it? Do we keep extending until we kill the Thunder King?
We should be able to kill two bosses tonight, maybe three. If we extend again this week, then we'll have at least a night and a half to work on Lei Shen, if not two full nights. That's pretty appealing. If we don't get him down, but are very close, do we extend again for two more nights? Or do we call it good and reset to get more gear? (If we're NOT close after next week, I'd probably reset.) It's really tempting to just keep extending until he dies, but I'm not sure we should do that.
OH! Hey, that's an interesting idea. Ardwen can't raid tonight. So what we could do is extend her lockout on Thursday and reclear the fairly easy tier bosses! Dark Animus, Iron Qon and Twins. Then smack Lei Shen on Monday and extend that lockout to finish him off. Ooooo, I think I really like that idea. It's a mix of good gear bosses (tier!) but also not putting us too far away from the Thunder King.
We've got a few days to decide, what do you think?
For Science!
Extending Ardwen's lockout sounds good to me.
I'm useful.... /clap!
Maybe I've missed something, but can we use Ardwen's lockout? She was with us when we killed Durumu, and then we continued to kill Prime and Dark without resetting the instance... so isn't she saved to our instance?
Beat me to it Sere....was wondering the same thing based on she is on our instance and even though SHE didn't kill it we did as a group....so thus extending would only be to our end.
Darkguns - Level 90 DK
Autogun - Retired Lock
Wilygun - Druid Extraordinaire
Shamgun - Shaman fun!
First of all: Pretty sure you guys are wrong. Each person has their own lockout since cataclysm that goes to the last boss they killed. Sooo.. Ardwen would extend her lockout and none of the rest of us would, then she would enter the instance first . . . voila!
Second: We're not doing that anyway. I'm pretty sure we're starting on Iron Quon on Thursday and Skarn told people after the raid on Monday night that they should go ahead and PuG the first 8 bosses if they want to and have time.
Skarn wrote:
So that is what the discussion is about, so we could rekill Dark Animus and get another person the chest piece. Skarn.. confirm or deny please
Aanvil, that's the first I've ever heard of that. I remember complaints back in 5.0 of guilds stealing other guilds ToES after helping them kill one mob, then go in and kill the rest. It makes sense that each raid has a raid ID, Ardwen's ID would be the same as ours, so she would enter an instance with mobs dead... viola!
Also, I wasn't paying attention after raid, so I missed hearing that. Be nice if we could get updates on what we're doing on the thread about the updates on what we're doing. Just saying.
Yeah, you were supposed to clear through Empress before you could get access to Terrace. However, Terrace was a lot easier than the last few bosses in Heart of Fear and had better gear too, so a lot of guilds picked up a PuG who had cleared Heart of Fear to give them access to Terrace, or alternatively they encouraged members of the guild to go along with a group that had access, then come back and share their lockout. I was under the impression you had to kill a boss, but if you only had to kill a trash mob, that would make it really easy.
Ah, you're thinking of the pre-Cata lockout system! Back in those days, each instance was assigned a specific numerical raid ID that was stored on the server. Whenever progress was made in that instance, the ID was updated on the server. Your character was assigned to that raid ID and could only zone into that one for the week. The character itself stored no information other than that ID. Under that system, Ardwen's progress in ToT would have updated with us killing Dark Animus since it was saved on the server.
The Cata and Mists system works different. Raid instance info is now saved on your character. You are not saved to a specific ID. Your character is flagged as having killed each boss individually. (Though if you kill a later boss like Durumu, you are flagged for having killed the earlier ones too.) So you could hop between three different raid groups and clear different bosses without affecting anyone in the other groups. Under this system, Ardwen still has a raid "ID" that has Dark Animus alive even though the rest of us killed it.
(The Heroic system in Cata/Mists is funky. Info is technically saved per character, but you can't instance hop for Heroic difficulty. You still have to zone into the same raid as before, you can't join someone else.)
My original hope was to kill Animus and Qon on Monday, then re-kill those two on Thursday. That didn't quite work. So we could either extend from there and go straight to Iron Qon or "back up" a step and kill Dark Animus again. Killing the Animus shouldn't take nearly as long. A lot of Monday was figuring out trash and figuring out the "puzzle" of the boss. We've worked all that out, so a repeat kill will be much faster.
For Science!
Ah you guys made posts while I was making a post cuz that was sitting open in a window for a long time at work. XD
As I just posted, Aanvil should be correct about how the lockout system works in Mists. I haven't played with it yet in Mists and it could be screwy. But that's how it's SUPPOSED to work.
Monday night I did say "go ahead and kill through Dark Animus if you want." So if people have done that, it's fine. If not, we can start with him Thursday if we'd like. Either way is fine. :)
For Science!
For anyone that missed it last night, we got Iron Qon down! Last possible moment too. Yeesh. :) We also decided that it's time to reset the instance and do a fresh run. The progression the last two weeks has been good, but there needs to be a balance, a time to relax a bit. The idea of a reset was well received last night.
So! Fresh instance on Thursday. Make sure you are ready! :D
For Science!
If anyone isn't going to be in the raid Thursday and has our lock out from last week we could jump to a later boss based on that lock out if we don't make it all the way up to Iron Quon. Just a thought.
This is extremely late so I fully expect almost no one will see it. Oh well! :) What to do with the raid tonight?
Option A: Continue the lockout from Thursday. Should be no problem to take down Ji-kun, Primordius and Dark Animus. Durumu may or may not give us some trouble. We got a good bead on him last time, but he does have a lot of one-shot mechanics. Worst case tonight, we clear to Iron Qon. Best case we have enough time to kill him too!
Option B: Extend Aanvil's lockout from last week and go straight to the Twin Consorts. Probably kill them fast and work on the Thunder King.
Of note: I will be OUT this Thursday. I've got a job interview early the next day in Seattle and I'll need my sleep. :)
Here is my suggestion: Take option A. Keep going on our current lockout and get more tier loot. Also expose Malefiscent and Loaffy to other bosses, hopefully get them more gear. On Thursday, use a fresh lockout to get more gear. When I return on Monday, extend the lockout I have, which should be right before or after Iron Qon. Kill Qon and Consorts. The following week we extend that lockout and spend the whole two days taking down the Thunder King.
That means we get almost no loot in two weeks, but due to the Thunder King's difficulty and our general habit of taking 2-3 nights to kill a new boss, it seems the most effective way to get him down.
Or we could go Option B, see how far we get on the Thunder King tonight and maybe extend that for next week to work on him. What does the guild want to do? :)
For Science!
Not to toot my own horn, but I have the skill to continue on and learn the last couple bosses, But Being that I took a 2 year break and finally just came back, I'm lacking in the gear sector. Though I could continue. It's gonna be a little rough with out just a couple more upgrades, not just for me but for the healers trying to keep me up.
Loaffy lvl 100 Warrior
Aristodemus lvl 100 Pally
Mushak lvl 100 Monk
Ímpatient lvl 100 Druid
Tells lvl 90 Priest
Tellos lvl 90 Shammy
Vonnegut lvl 90 Warlock
Bãcksurgeon lvl 91 Rogue
Merrelleyla lvl 94Hunter
I'm tired of lvling alts!
But low rolls...bleh.
I'm in for tonight but out for Thursday and next Monday.
Either route sounds good. I need to read up on the last two bosses. The Twins should be easy but Lei Shen is going to take us some time.
had something come up tonight. I wont be on for enough time to be able to raid tonight, still be up for Thursday though.
Loaffy lvl 100 Warrior
Aristodemus lvl 100 Pally
Mushak lvl 100 Monk
Ímpatient lvl 100 Druid
Tells lvl 90 Priest
Tellos lvl 90 Shammy
Vonnegut lvl 90 Warlock
Bãcksurgeon lvl 91 Rogue
Merrelleyla lvl 94Hunter
I'm tired of lvling alts!
We got Iron Quon last night and discussed this issue after the raid. It is my recollection that we agreed we would restart the raid again on Thursday night and then use Skarn's lockout to go hit Twins next Monday. We'll be missing Skarn and Muta on Thursday so the rest of us will have to bring our A games.
That was indeed the consensus of the raid. Fresh raid on Thursday, clear as far as possible. Twins and Thunder King on Monday. Woo! :D
For Science!
I say we just kill the 10 bosses up to the Twins and Skarn won't HAVE to use his :p hehe Yes I am fully in agreement with killing as many as we can without Skarn/Muta there....now the interesting part who is the fill in raid leader on Thursday????
Darkguns - Level 90 DK
Autogun - Retired Lock
Wilygun - Druid Extraordinaire
Shamgun - Shaman fun!
I vote Aanvil!
I'm always happy to boss people around. Go kill stuff! Don't stand in the puddle, oh wait, DO stand in the puddle. But I thought Auto volunteered didn't he? That's how I read it.
I am not a good raid leader as melee because I don't see the entire area and I do not use any type of raid frames to watch people's health that well...so means I vote with Kro for Aanvil!
Darkguns - Level 90 DK
Autogun - Retired Lock
Wilygun - Druid Extraordinaire
Shamgun - Shaman fun!
So clearly we need someone to act as back up raid leader with no Muta and Skarn. We should have them practice with Skarn in since ya..... we were a little bit of a mess last night with out ya Skarn :)
I'm glad to hear you got some stuff down! Sorry to hear it was a little rough. :)
So you're saying I should boss someone around to teach them how to boss everyone around?
It is nice to hear you missed me! ;)
For Science!
I always said whoever was raid leading is fricking awesome because it is a hard job to do as usually we fill in our role and we can easily do that but when you are also calling out adds/healing/battle rezzes/etc. it can make life hell.
So I will take my tunnel vision and stay right there as it is nice and cozy and so I thank you Skarn and all the Raid Leaders for the work that you have put in and the commitment you have to ensuring that we do what is necessary to progress! Through dumb deaths and dumber moments (oh that fire is bad??) you pesevere and are able to laugh it off!
Darkguns - Level 90 DK
Autogun - Retired Lock
Wilygun - Druid Extraordinaire
Shamgun - Shaman fun!